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 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
in the long term, their "tuesday" decision will hurt them.

Will it?

If they go and release Heretic Militarum (or whatever dumb name they decide on for Traitor Guard) tomorrow with a full plastic range, modelled on the examples we saw in BSF, with Beastmen included as a unit type, and all sorts of other things (tainted Commissars, Ogryn, etc.), will anyone really care that the FW list for R&H is defunct?

Even if they don't. The amount of R&H and Elysian players is completely insignificant and the 'community' will express sympathy when you complain about it on the internet but no one really cares enough about it to effect GW's bottom line.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
in the long term, their "tuesday" decision will hurt them.

Will it?

If they go and release Heretic Militarum (or whatever dumb name they decide on for Traitor Guard) tomorrow with a full plastic range, modelled on the examples we saw in BSF, with Beastmen included as a unit type, and all sorts of other things (tainted Commissars, Ogryn, etc.), will anyone really care that the FW list for R&H is defunct?

No , but ,that is only one half of the coin, the more pressing matter is for those factions that are Stuck in the desinvestment cycle Like dark eldar or craftworlders. These won't sell really anymore.

dark eldar and craftworlds are quite differant from R&H, let's try not to equate the two.

BrianDavion wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
in the long term, their "tuesday" decision will hurt them.

Will it?

If they go and release Heretic Militarum (or whatever dumb name they decide on for Traitor Guard) tomorrow with a full plastic range, modelled on the examples we saw in BSF, with Beastmen included as a unit type, and all sorts of other things (tainted Commissars, Ogryn, etc.), will anyone really care that the FW list for R&H is defunct?

No , but ,that is only one half of the coin, the more pressing matter is for those factions that are Stuck in the desinvestment cycle Like dark eldar or craftworlders. These won't sell really anymore.

dark eldar and craftworlds are quite differant from R&H, let's try not to equate the two.

Same difference, less sales --> deinvestment--> further less sales--> etc.

You wanting to not look at the writing at the wall doesn't change the fact that players have conglomerated population wise in "secure" factions like CSM, SM, AM, or new released factions etc. Which then get's interpreted by the beancounters as these factions beeing even more popular then they would be.
It's a selfperpetuating cycle.
The only qualitative difference is, that FW and GW design seemed to have ALSO issue in internal politicking.
Which may very well have contributed to the outright squating of R&H , elysians, corsairs whilest something that drastic would never happen to DE or craftworlders, however let's also not forget that both factions are no stranger to beeing ignored and in stagnation ruleswise ( DE) or modelwise (eldar) and that that HAS an impact on the respective playerbase.

no they're not. the eldar armies are GW produced armies, and are long time staples (dark eldar are fairly plasticized too, they could use new stuff but they're no where near as bad off as CWE)
forge world stuff is differant. they're a set of rules produced by another studio, that GW never really factored into their decision making. forge world is also moving away from making botique 40k stuff and is being more where specialsit games are produced. when's the last unit FOR 40k that FW has released? I'm not talking about "horus heresy units that we got 40k rules for" I'm talking 40k specificly. because as far as I can tell.. they put out a single primaris super heavy tank at the dawn of 8th edition and haven't done anything since

BrianDavion wrote:
no they're not. the eldar armies are GW produced armies, and are long time staples (dark eldar are fairly plasticized too, they could use new stuff but they're no where near as bad off as CWE)
forge world stuff is differant. they're a set of rules produced by another studio, that GW never really factored into their decision making. forge world is also moving away from making botique 40k stuff and is being more where specialsit games are produced. when's the last unit FOR 40k that FW has released? I'm not talking about "horus heresy units that we got 40k rules for" I'm talking 40k specificly. because as far as I can tell.. they put out a single primaris super heavy tank at the dawn of 8th edition and haven't done anything since

underlined part is wrong since first CA.
Nothing you stated changes the fact, that the conglomeration of the playerbase happened.
Nothing you stated changes the fact, that it is these factions get preferential treatment over peripheral, see DE and Aeldari f.e.

That's because of GW's stupid approach where they see something isn't selling and instead of trying to figure out why and fix it like every other company in the world they say oh this isn't popular let's ignore it further and make more space marines since those sell.

Not Online!!! wrote:
underlined part is wrong since first CA.

Not really. In fact, this alone is why R&H and Elysians don't factor in. They're not on the same level as the various flavours of Eldar. They weren't made by GW Proper, so they might as well not exist, especially with no miniature support.

Put simply, from GW's perspective, they don't matter, and that's assuming they even remember they exist to begin with. You cannot equate two exceptionally niche FW army lists with frickin' Craftworld Eldar, a staple of 40k since the days of RT.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
underlined part is wrong since first CA.

Not really. In fact, this alone is why R&H and Elysians don't factor in. They're not on the same level as the various flavours of Eldar. They weren't made by GW Proper, so they might as well not exist, especially with no miniature support.

Put simply, from GW's perspective, they don't matter, and that's assuming they even remember they exist to begin with. You cannot equate two exceptionally niche FW army lists with frickin' Craftworld Eldar, a staple of 40k since the days of RT.

I can , i did , and i made a propper argument, a better case study is SoB.
It's the same principle with the only difference beeing the internal politicking made it possible to eliminate FW factions, whilest "unpopular" GW factions just stagnate into , nigh, nothingness.

Both situations lead however to lower player populations of these factions.
How many people played SoB, before the update? Alot less.

How many want to start eldar? not alot, infact it is according to my shop over here one of the factions that nigh never get's picked up for a faction.

It's the same effect that then by GW's beancounters leads to further marginalisation.

 Eonfuzz wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Anyone saying the Index era was healthy and balanced might as well just be called a liar because it literally could not be further from the truth.

How so? It's far better than the gak we had at any lifecycle of 8e and 9e (outside of index).

Yeah sure, it was bland. But that was what it was supposed to be, here's the template for *everyone* to start playing 8e right out the gate.

Well yes, but actually no.

The index era had some pretty miserable to play with rules for several of my favorite factions in the game that really only got fixed when the codex came out. Genestealer Cults were horrendously "random = fun" where you got to deep strike all your stuff turn 1 but had to roll on a table - it might get to move an extra d6" towards the enemy making the charge all but guaranteed! It might show up on your board edge - whoopsiedoodles, guess you lost that game!

And for good measure GSC stayed in that state for A YEAR AND A FREAKING HALF while eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeverybody else got their codexes. And then got immediately nerfed right afterwards because people got salty about an assassin character being able to assassinate a target with reasonable rolls.

And pretty much any faction that relied on psychic powers had to deal with 8th ed's psyker rules combined with a grand total of count 'em three powers. Enjoy playing your Tzeentch daemon, thousand sons, or grey knight army with 3 psychic powers to choose from and only being able to attempt to cast each one one time. There were several characters who were able to take every psychic power that a faction had all at once.

Let's also not forget that it had such fun elements as turn 1 deep strike for everyone, scoring flyers, no rule of three, mixed IMPERIUM/CHAOS detachments, Malefic Lords, old Ynnari doubleshooting with everything while nobody else had chapter tactics....

This is just the nostalgia cycle. People are always the most nostaglic for those periods of the game where people were playing with a variety of stuff and trying things out because the game wasn't "solved." the balance of 9th is painfully easy to figure out because spoiler alert the army what was good is still good they didnt change that much, so we didn't REALLY get to experience that again with 9th.

Index 8th wasn't balanced, it was just new and people hadn't had time to get their miserable spam lists together yet.

BrianDavion wrote:
when's the last unit FOR 40k that FW has released? I'm not talking about "horus heresy units that we got 40k rules for" I'm talking 40k specificly. because as far as I can tell.. they put out a single primaris super heavy tank at the dawn of 8th edition and haven't done anything since

They've released the Necron Seraptek since then.

 Platuan4th wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
when's the last unit FOR 40k that FW has released? I'm not talking about "horus heresy units that we got 40k rules for" I'm talking 40k specificly. because as far as I can tell.. they put out a single primaris super heavy tank at the dawn of 8th edition and haven't done anything since

They've released the Necron Seraptek since then.

Also I'd call the various knights primarily 40k models.

...At least, based on the amount of hatred I generally get if I bring a knight detachment along with my mechanicum army when people want to play 30k games. The superheavy rules do not seem to be highly regarded in the hyperelitist 30k community.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
when's the last unit FOR 40k that FW has released? I'm not talking about "horus heresy units that we got 40k rules for" I'm talking 40k specificly. because as far as I can tell.. they put out a single primaris super heavy tank at the dawn of 8th edition and haven't done anything since

They've released the Necron Seraptek since then.

Also I'd call the various knights primarily 40k models.

...At least, based on the amount of hatred I generally get if I bring a knight detachment along with my mechanicum army when people want to play 30k games. The superheavy rules do not seem to be highly regarded in the hyperelitist 30k community.

Considering the amount of 40K players who think Knights and other Super Heavies shouldn't exist/be playable in "regular" 40K(despite Super Heavy rules having been in "regular" 40K longer than Apocalypse has existed), the Super Heavy rules don't seem to be highly regarded anywhere.

 Platuan4th wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
when's the last unit FOR 40k that FW has released? I'm not talking about "horus heresy units that we got 40k rules for" I'm talking 40k specificly. because as far as I can tell.. they put out a single primaris super heavy tank at the dawn of 8th edition and haven't done anything since

They've released the Necron Seraptek since then.

Also I'd call the various knights primarily 40k models.

...At least, based on the amount of hatred I generally get if I bring a knight detachment along with my mechanicum army when people want to play 30k games. The superheavy rules do not seem to be highly regarded in the hyperelitist 30k community.

Considering the amount of 40K players who think Knights and other Super Heavies shouldn't exist/be playable in "regular" 40K(despite Super Heavy rules having been in "regular" 40K longer than Apocalypse has existed), the Super Heavy rules don't seem to be highly regarded anywhere.

true, though given that 30k games tend to be about 3,000 points, one single superheavy would not seem entirely unreasonable in that instance, particularly because you're aaaaaaaaaalways playing against a primarch on the other side in games of 30k.

Wayniac wrote:
That's because of GW's stupid approach where they see something isn't selling and instead of trying to figure out why and fix it like every other company in the world they say oh this isn't popular let's ignore it further and make more space marines since those sell.

Indeed, this seems to be GW's policy.
SM sell like hell. I'm not buying them as I found them always boring.
Let's see how high the proportion of Xenos armies at events will be next time.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Eonfuzz wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Anyone saying the Index era was healthy and balanced might as well just be called a liar because it literally could not be further from the truth.

How so? It's far better than the gak we had at any lifecycle of 8e and 9e (outside of index).

Yeah sure, it was bland. But that was what it was supposed to be, here's the template for *everyone* to start playing 8e right out the gate.

Well yes, but actually no.

The index era had some pretty miserable to play with rules for several of my favorite factions in the game that really only got fixed when the codex came out. Genestealer Cults were horrendously "random = fun" where you got to deep strike all your stuff turn 1 but had to roll on a table - it might get to move an extra d6" towards the enemy making the charge all but guaranteed! It might show up on your board edge - whoopsiedoodles, guess you lost that game!

And for good measure GSC stayed in that state for A YEAR AND A FREAKING HALF while eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeverybody else got their codexes. And then got immediately nerfed right afterwards because people got salty about an assassin character being able to assassinate a target with reasonable rolls.

And pretty much any faction that relied on psychic powers had to deal with 8th ed's psyker rules combined with a grand total of count 'em three powers. Enjoy playing your Tzeentch daemon, thousand sons, or grey knight army with 3 psychic powers to choose from and only being able to attempt to cast each one one time. There were several characters who were able to take every psychic power that a faction had all at once.

Let's also not forget that it had such fun elements as turn 1 deep strike for everyone, scoring flyers, no rule of three, mixed IMPERIUM/CHAOS detachments, Malefic Lords, old Ynnari doubleshooting with everything while nobody else had chapter tactics....

This is just the nostalgia cycle. People are always the most nostaglic for those periods of the game where people were playing with a variety of stuff and trying things out because the game wasn't "solved." the balance of 9th is painfully easy to figure out because spoiler alert the army what was good is still good they didnt change that much, so we didn't REALLY get to experience that again with 9th.

Index 8th wasn't balanced, it was just new and people hadn't had time to get their miserable spam lists together yet.

This is all true. The index era had a lot less wombo-combo type stuff, but it definitely wasn't balanced.

However, I think it really served to highlighted just how shallow the actual core rules were for 8th edition. The codices tried to disguise this with stratagems and auras and special rules (about 90% of which seem to involve rerolling 1s for something or other), but even most of those rules didn't add any meaningful decisions. I think 8th (and by extension 9th) really suffer from being stuffed to the gills with uninteractive rules.

Auras are the obvious one - there's no cost to activate them, no choices to be made with regard to which unit you buff, and generally no way for an opponent to stop the aura short of killing the character generating it.

But the psychic phase is almost as bad. Pick a power and play a mini-game of Yahtzee to see if it works. If your opponent has a psyker, then they can attempt to stop it with their own Yahtzee mini-game. That's it. There's generally no resource-management involved, nor any way to improve your odds of casting a power at greater risk (something that seems like it should be mandatory for magic based around harnessing the warp).

It just seems that there are currently very few meaningful choices to be made. And many of the ones that do exist are either false choices (do I take the good special weapon or the crap one? Do I pay a lot of points to give a melee weapon to a sergeant who sucks in melee regardless?), or ones that tend to be very obvious.

 vipoid wrote:
This is all true. The index era had a lot less wombo-combo type stuff, but it definitely wasn't balanced.

I think when people mean it was balanced, they mean that the power curve wasn't ludicrous if two players threw together an un-skewed normal sort of army.

There was a sort of halcyon age of exploration - maybe this unit is okay now, maybe I can build that way etc.

Obviously it died in the face of Guilliman castles, massed blobs of chaff, smite spam from 30~ point psykers etc etc - but I don't think those appeared on casual tables on day one, and so for a brief moment the feeling was freedom from the tyranny of 7th.

In time factions were obviously *solved* for want of a better word, and the fact they were then allowed to linger in this state for months and months was bad.

Sadly with 9th there hasn't even been that moment of innocence - for the most part if you were screwed 9~ months ago, you're still screwed now - even if the objectives have changed things up somewhat and its unclear when the "unscrewing" will occur. Although admittedly with the global situation, that's perhaps not as negative as it would normally be.

Necrons have to be the canary. We shall see in a matter of weeks.

Tyel wrote:

 vipoid wrote:
This is all true. The index era had a lot less wombo-combo type stuff, but it definitely wasn't balanced.

I think when people mean it was balanced, they mean that the power curve wasn't ludicrous if two players threw together an un-skewed normal sort of army.

There was a sort of halcyon age of exploration - maybe this unit is okay now, maybe I can build that way etc.

Obviously it died in the face of Guilliman castles, massed blobs of chaff, smite spam from 30~ point psykers etc etc - but I don't think those appeared on casual tables on day one, and so for a brief moment the feeling was freedom from the tyranny of 7th.

In time factions were obviously *solved* for want of a better word, and the fact they were then allowed to linger in this state for months and months was bad.

Sadly with 9th there hasn't even been that moment of innocence - for the most part if you were screwed 9~ months ago, you're still screwed now - even if the objectives have changed things up somewhat and its unclear when the "unscrewing" will occur. Although admittedly with the global situation, that's perhaps not as negative as it would normally be.

Necrons have to be the canary. We shall see in a matter of weeks.

Eh, my first game of index 8th saw a bunch of wyches charge in to a leman russ and myself and my opponent realized that there was absolutely nothing it could do for the remainder of the game besides make 6+ to hit overwatch attacks.

It was a pretty short window of innocent "wowee maybe everything is good and balanced".

the_scotsman wrote:
Eh, my first game of index 8th saw a bunch of wyches charge in to a leman russ and myself and my opponent realized that there was absolutely nothing it could do for the remainder of the game besides make 6+ to hit overwatch attacks.

It was a pretty short window of innocent "wowee maybe everything is good and balanced".

Clearly GW were watching...
Although I sort of feel the response is "that seems fair enough for the Wyches to me, screen harder".

I bet you have way more upsetting experiences than that

I find all this salt over "wait and see" to be rather funny considering the steady drip of buffs and nerfs we have been seeing are coming for Codex Space Marines:

* First Born are getting more wounds, albeit it with an increase in cost
* Weapons are being updated for everyone, often to do more damage
* Chapter Tactics are being revised, mostly in the downward direction
* Shiny new models with bonkers rules
* The new Core keyword will limit the targets of aura and abilities

But there are still all the things we don't know that can make the difference between a revised OP codex and a move towards balance:

* Will the revised weapons have revised points cost?
* Will unit cost be revised outside of the First Born?
* Will any of the unit rules change from the old codex or the Indomitus release?
* Will the rules for Angels of Death be revised?

I mean, Angels of Death has three opportunities alone to make an impact.

* Will Shock Assault stay the same?
* Will they finally get around to fixing ATSKNF to make sense?
* Will they nerf Doctrines by making them something less abusive than -1 AP for 2 weapon types for a few turns?

We just don't know. I guess we will have to wait and see.

This is all true. The index era had a lot less wombo-combo type stuff, but it definitely wasn't balanced.

It's funny. I often wonder if 8th in general, and index 40k in particular would have been so well received had they not been preceded by 7th. Seventh edition being the most generally reviled of all 40k editions, and the one that "we" as a player bas seem to be able to universally agree was the worst one. For example, if 8th had followed 5th instead, I don't think I'd have taken to it quite the same ...

dark eldar and craftworlds are quite differant from R&H, let's try not to equate the two.

They are different in this case, and I agree they shouldn't be compared, but DE in particular illustrate the issue quite well. Most of our DE players have quit the game. It was one thing to go 5-10 years without an update back in the days when GW might only release 2 or 3 codexes over the course of an edition, but to get only one major update ("major" in this case meaning rules AND models like in 5th) over the lifespan of an army that's been in the game since 3rd ed, and to have multiple books come out since that update that do nothing but eliminate units and make your army more fragmented ... that's a hard pill to swallow. Now, to watch Marines get constant releases over the course of a two year period ... that's driven a lot of players from the game here.

It's a shame too because it's a fun army to play against and so unique, but I can't blame them. "Wait and See" hasn't worked out for them. I have every confidence that CWE will eventually be fine, but IDK about DE.

Tycho wrote:

This is all true. The index era had a lot less wombo-combo type stuff, but it definitely wasn't balanced.

It's funny. I often wonder if 8th in general, and index 40k in particular would have been so well received had they not been preceded by 7th. Seventh edition being the most generally reviled of all 40k editions, and the one that "we" as a player bas seem to be able to universally agree was the worst one. For example, if 8th had followed 5th instead, I don't think I'd have taken to it quite the same ...

I think the mere fact that 8th wasn't 7th made people willing to overlook a *lot* of its flaws.

To my mind, this is rather unfortunate, as IMO a lot of reasonable stuff was thrown out as well, and 9th doesn't seem to have fixed a great deal that was wrong with 8th.

Tycho wrote:

dark eldar and craftworlds are quite differant from R&H, let's try not to equate the two.

They are different in this case, and I agree they shouldn't be compared, but DE in particular illustrate the issue quite well. Most of our DE players have quit the game. It was one thing to go 5-10 years without an update back in the days when GW might only release 2 or 3 codexes over the course of an edition, but to get only one major update ("major" in this case meaning rules AND models like in 5th) over the lifespan of an army that's been in the game since 3rd ed, and to have multiple books come out since that update that do nothing but eliminate units and make your army more fragmented ... that's a hard pill to swallow. Now, to watch Marines get constant releases over the course of a two year period ... that's driven a lot of players from the game here.

It's a shame too because it's a fun army to play against and so unique, but I can't blame them. "Wait and See" hasn't worked out for them. I have every confidence that CWE will eventually be fine, but IDK about DE.

As a DE player, I think the most galling thing is the sheer lack of thought and effort put into our army.

I mean, if we're going to be stuck with just 3 generic characters for years, the least they could do is make them actually interesting. Instead, most of the wargear options have been stripped away, and their only abilities are dull, predictable aura bonuses with zero thought for how the army is supposed to function (e.g. Archons not being able to buff Kabalites even when they're riding in the same transport ).

But perhaps the best example of this would be PA: Phoenix Rising. Most other armies were treated to a wealth of new options and features for their army. As an example, Harlequins, while still having just 4 characters, were given options for each of them that they could take in place of their standard auras/abilities. This was a great idea and allowed said characters to perform significantly different roles. A Troupe Master could sacrifice his aura to instead wound on 2s or deal extra Mortal Wounds (turning him from buff character into a lone assassin). A Shadowseer had an aura that rewarded him (and the units he was buffing) for staying far away, and another that rewarded him for getting right in the enemy's face. All great stuff. And of course, this was in addition to extra relics, stratagems etc.

Then you've stuff like Chaos getting a host of new options for their chapters, you've got SMs getting stratagems to promote characters at the start of the game (I believe Orks got something similar as well).

So what did DE get? Custom faction traits, most of which were entirely worthless (oh good, melee abilities for the shooty subfaction), and all of which were inferior to the Marine ones (not least because, unlike for Marines, taking them locks you out of any Kabal-/Cult-/Coven-specific relics, warlord traits and stratagems). And that was it. That was the only new thing DE got in Phoenix Rising.

I think this is the sort of thing that really gets to people. I mean, is it really too much to ask that DE get the same level of effort as Harlequins?

Plus why would you ever do a custom Kabal when Flayed Skull exists as is? Sure you don’t get Vect but that's already a 4CP Strat to begin with.

Then you've stuff like Chaos getting a host of new options for their chapters, you've got SMs getting stratagems to promote characters at the start of the game (I believe Orks got something similar as well).

You know you're hurting when CSM are doing better! But yeah, I really feel for DE players in all of this. It's one of the most characterful armies we have, and has so much potential and it's just ... rotting. Really hoping they get a refresh on the scale of the Necrons in this edition!

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Plus why would you ever do a custom Kabal when Flayed Skull exists as is? Sure you don’t get Vect but that's already a 4CP Strat to begin with.

Yeah the custom kabals are a joke. The custom covens have the obvious crazy OP combo and the custom wyches have a combo that you'd at least CONSIDER vs some of the other wych cults.

So just a question...should we wait and see what every codex gets before we make any judgements? How long will that take? 2-3 years?

The game will always be like this as long as the rules come in piecemeal. You gotta believe at this point that it is intentional. It keeps models moving off the shelves at a steady rate...looks great for investors.

the_scotsman wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Plus why would you ever do a custom Kabal when Flayed Skull exists as is? Sure you don’t get Vect but that's already a 4CP Strat to begin with.

Yeah the custom kabals are a joke. The custom covens have the obvious crazy OP combo and the custom wyches have a combo that you'd at least CONSIDER vs some of the other wych cults.

I mean, all the Kabals are just worse than Flayed Skull because you get all the main benefits you want. You get better shooting, rerolls for a lot of the riding weapons, AND better movement as icing on the cake. For the games I proxied I'd never even take Black Heart for Vect. Flayed Skull was just THAT good especially with me wanting to do Raiders.

So just a question...should we wait and see what every codex gets before we make any judgements? How long will that take? 2-3 years?

That becomes the problem with "wait and see". Each group has to decide what it means to them. For my group, we've decided it's the first two codexes. If they come out good, we're willing to give benefit of the doubt moving forward, but even that's a potential trap - how many times have they released a codex only to shift the design philosophy on the next one. So it kind of becomes what you personally are willing to deal with ...

 Xenomancers wrote:
So just a question...should we wait and see what every codex gets before we make any judgements? How long will that take? 2-3 years?

The game will always be like this as long as the rules come in piecemeal. You gotta believe at this point that it is intentional. It keeps models moving off the shelves at a steady rate...looks great for investors.

Yes. Absolutely. And the gulf between factions that have codexes and don't have codexes is also very much on purpose. Common sense fixes are very much held off on on purpose in order for there to be a bit of excitement when a new codex drops, encouraging people who don't have that army to jump in, and those who do have that army to buy new stuff for it to take advantage of new rules.

The concept of "manufactured discontent" is very real. You are supposed to be dissatisfied with your army while you wait for a codex, and excited when a new codex drops for the possibilities unlocked by its rules.

Why do you think every single edition since 6th each new codex contained some new "gimmick" that was very loosely connected to fluff that GW used to make the new codexes stronger, that then caused the people to get them to tell others to 'just wait until you get your thing!' and accept the imbalanced games?

6th: flyers were dominant, new codexes contained your faction's flyer
7th: Formations/decurions were in codexes
8th: Subfaction bonuses, stratagems, traits were in codexes (and for a whole edition the playerbase was laughably OK with forcing their opponents to get aaaaaaaaabsolutely nothing in exchange for those free benefits!!!)
9th: "Army Purity Bonuses" AKA Doctrine-style rules will be in each codex.

There is a very good reason why marines were let out of the gate early with their crazy doctrines nobody had an answer to. It was SUPPOSED to make you pissed off. You're supposed to be excited when your codex eventually drops with your free third and fourth layers of free army-wide blanket rule bonuses so you can finally compete with marines. You're also supposed to be OK with playing those against your opponents because "hey, I've had to compete with marines using this stuff for a year plus now! you'll get yours soon! Look - it's balanced because you can have allies!"

 Xenomancers wrote:
So just a question...should we wait and see what every codex gets before we make any judgements? How long will that take? 2-3 years?

The game will always be like this as long as the rules come in piecemeal. You gotta believe at this point that it is intentional. It keeps models moving off the shelves at a steady rate...looks great for investors.

You should wait and see for each product until you see that product in full. You can judge the base rules now. You can judge Codex Space Marines when it comes out. The same for Codex Necrons.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
Plus why would you ever do a custom Kabal when Flayed Skull exists as is? Sure you don’t get Vect but that's already a 4CP Strat to begin with.

Yeah the custom kabals are a joke. The custom covens have the obvious crazy OP combo and the custom wyches have a combo that you'd at least CONSIDER vs some of the other wych cults.

I mean, all the Kabals are just worse than Flayed Skull because you get all the main benefits you want. You get better shooting, rerolls for a lot of the riding weapons, AND better movement as icing on the cake. For the games I proxied I'd never even take Black Heart for Vect. Flayed Skull was just THAT good especially with me wanting to do Raiders.

Flayed Skull is very good, are what Kabal IMO should be, and it's what I played. That said, (for what it's worth) competitive players still erred toward Black Heart.

I don't think it was too much for Drukhari players to expect that PA would give them genuine alternative options. GW demostrated with Harlequins that they can write good rules if they want to, but with the Drukhari they seemingly could not be bothered.